Jennifer Aniston reacts to Matthew Perry’s ‘anxiety and self-torture’ on Friends set

Jennifer Aniston has expressed her compassion for Matthew Perry after he discussed the anxiety he felt while starring on Friends.

Perry opened up about his fear of performing in front of a live audience during the Friends reunion, which aired last month.

“To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh,” he said of the live audience.

Perry added: “It’s not healthy, for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions if I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get. I would freak out.”

During a recent interview with Today, Aniston reflected on Perry’s comments and expressed empathy for her former co-star.

“I didn’t understand the level of anxiety and self-torture [that] was put on Matthew Perry, if he didn’t get that laugh, and the devastation that he felt,” she said. “Which makes a lot of sense.”

In that same interview, Aniston commented on the sitcom’s legacy, telling Today: “To have an opportunity to land on people’s hearts all over the world, that’s kind of incredible, whether it was helping them with grief, mental illness, illness of any kind of disease, learning how to speak English. It’s just sort of a very — you can’t really explain it.”

Friends aired for 10 seasons between 1994 and 2004. Courteney Cox, who portrayed Monica Geller on the series, recently opened up about being the only member of the main cast to not be nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on the show.